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INTRO(1)		      Linux Users Manual		     INTRO(1)



NAME
       intro - Introduction to user commands

DESCRIPTION
       Section 1 of the manual describes user commands and tools, for example,
       file manipulation tools, shells,  compilers,  web  browsers,  file  and
       image viewers and editors, and so on.

       All  commands  yield  a status value on termination.  This value can be
       tested (e.g., in most shells the variable $?  contains  the  status  of
       the  last  executed  command) to see whether the command completed suc
       cessfully.  A zero exit status is conventionally used to indicate  suc
       cess,  and  a  non-zero status means that the command was unsuccessful.
       (Details of the exit status can be found in wait(2).)  A non-zero  exit
       status  can  be	in the range 1 to 255, and some commands use different
       non-zero status values to indicate the reason why the command failed.

NOTES
       Linux is a flavor of Unix, and as a first approximation all  user  com
       mands  under  Unix work precisely the same under Linux (and FreeBSD and
       lots of other Unix-like systems).

       Under Linux there are GUIs (graphical user interfaces), where  you  can
       point  and  click  and  drag, and hopefully get work done without first
       reading lots of documentation.  The traditional Unix environment  is  a
       CLI  (command line interface), where you type commands to tell the com
       puter what to do.  That is faster and more powerful, but requires find
       ing out what the commands are.  Below a bare minimum, to get started.

   Login
       In  order  to start working, you probably first have to login, that is,
       give your username and password.  See also login(1).  The program login
       now starts a shell (command interpreter) for you.  In case of a graphi
       cal login, you get a screen with menus or icons and a mouse click  will
       start a shell in a window.  See also xterm(1).

   The shell
       One  types  commands  to the shell, the command interpreter.  It is not
       built-in, but is just a program and you can change your shell.	Every
       body  has  her  own  favorite one.  The standard one is called sh.  See
       also ash(1), bash(1), csh(1), zsh(1), chsh(1).

       A session might go like

	      knuth login: aeb
	      Password: ********
	      % date
	      Tue Aug  6 23:50:44 CEST 2002
	      % cal
		   August 2002
	      Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
			   1  2  3
	       4  5  6	7  8  9 10
	      11 12 13 14 15 16 17
	      18 19 20 21 22 23 24
	      25 26 27 28 29 30 31

	      % ls
	      bin  tel
	      % ls -l
	      total 2
	      drwxrwxr-x   2 aeb       1024 Aug  6 23:51 bin
	      -rw-rw-r--   1 aeb	 37 Aug  6 23:52 tel
	      % cat tel
	      maja    0501-1136285
	      peter   0136-7399214
	      % cp tel tel2
	      % ls -l
	      total 3
	      drwxr-xr-x   2 aeb       1024 Aug  6 23:51 bin
	      -rw-r--r--   1 aeb	 37 Aug  6 23:52 tel
	      -rw-r--r--   1 aeb	 37 Aug  6 23:53 tel2
	      % mv tel tel1
	      % ls -l
	      total 3
	      drwxr-xr-x   2 aeb       1024 Aug  6 23:51 bin
	      -rw-r--r--   1 aeb	 37 Aug  6 23:52 tel1
	      -rw-r--r--   1 aeb	 37 Aug  6 23:53 tel2
	      % diff tel1 tel2
	      % rm tel1
	      % grep maja tel2
	      maja    0501-1136285
	      %
       and here typing Control-D ended the session.  The % here was  the  com
       mand  prompt  it is the shells way of indicating that it is ready for
       the next command.  The prompt can be customized in lots	of  ways,  and
       one might include stuff like username, machine name, current directory,
       time, etc.  An assignment PS1="What next, master? "  would  change  the
       prompt as indicated.

       We see that there are commands date (that gives date and time), and cal
       (that gives a calendar).

       The command ls lists the contents of the current directory   it	tells
       you  what  files  you  have.  With a -l option it gives a long listing,
       that includes the owner and size and date of the file, and the  permis
       sions  people  have for reading and/or changing the file.  For example,
       the file "tel" here is 37 bytes long, owned by aeb and  the  owner  can
       read  and write it, others can only read it.  Owner and permissions can
       be changed by the commands chown and chmod.

       The command cat will show the contents of a file.  (The	name  is  from
       "concatenate and print": all files given as parameters are concatenated
       and sent to "standard output", here the terminal screen.)

       The command cp (from "copy") will copy a file.  On the other hand,  the
       command mv (from "move") only renames it.

       The  command  diff lists the differences between two files.  Here there
       was no output because there were no differences.

       The command rm (from "remove") deletes the file, and be careful! it  is
       gone.  No wastepaper basket or anything.  Deleted means lost.

       The  command  grep (from "g/re/p") finds occurrences of a string in one
       or more files.  Here it finds Majas telephone number.

   Pathnames and the current directory
       Files live in a large tree, the file hierarchy.	Each  has  a  pathname
       describing  the	path  from the root of the tree (which is called /) to
       the file.  For example, such a full pathname  might  be	/home/aeb/tel.
       Always  using  full  pathnames would be inconvenient, and the name of a
       file in the current directory may be abbreviated  by  only  giving  the
       last  component.   That	is  why  "/home/aeb/tel" can be abbreviated to
       "tel" when the current directory is "/home/aeb".

       The command pwd prints the current directory.

       The command cd changes the current directory.  Try "cd /" and "pwd" and
       "cd" and "pwd".

   Directories
       The command mkdir makes a new directory.

       The  command  rmdir  removes  a directory if it is empty, and complains
       otherwise.

       The command find (with a rather baroque syntax) will  find  files  with
       given  name or other properties.  For example, "find . -name tel" would
       find the file "tel" starting in the present directory (which is	called
       ".").   And  "find  / -name tel" would do the same, but starting at the
       root of the tree.  Large searches on a multi-GB disk will be  time-con
       suming, and it may be better to use locate(1).

   Disks and Filesystems
       The  command  mount  will attach the file system found on some disk (or
       floppy, or CDROM or so) to the big file system hierarchy.   And	umount
       detaches  it again.  The command df will tell you how much of your disk
       is still free.

   Processes
       On a Unix system many user and  system  processes  run  simultaneously.
       The  one  you  are talking to runs in the foreground, the others in the
       background.  The command ps will show you which	processes  are	active
       and  what numbers these processes have.	The command kill allows you to
       get rid of them.  Without option this is a friendly request: please  go
       away.   And "kill -9" followed by the number of the process is an imme
       diate kill.  Foreground processes can often be killed  by  typing  Con
       trol-C.

   Getting information
       There are thousands of commands, each with many options.  Traditionally
       commands are documented on man pages, (like this one), so that the com
       mand  "man  kill" will document the use of the command "kill" (and "man
       man" document the command "man").   The	program  man  sends  the  text
       through	some  pager,  usually less.  Hit the space bar to get the next
       page, hit q to quit.

       In documentation it is customary to refer to man pages  by  giving  the
       name  and section number, as in man(1).	Man pages are terse, and allow
       you to find quickly some forgotten detail.  For newcomers an  introduc
       tory text with more examples and explanations is useful.

       A  lot  of  GNU/FSF  software  is provided with info files.  Type "info
       info" for an introduction on the use of the program "info".

       Special	 topics   are	often	treated   in	HOWTOs.     Look    in
       /usr/share/doc/howto/en and use a browser if you find HTML files there.

SEE ALSO
       standards(7)

COLOPHON
       This page is part of release 3.05 of the Linux  man-pages  project.   A
       description  of	the project, and information about reporting bugs, can
       be found at http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/.



Linux				  2007-11-15			      INTRO(1)




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